


should i believe in the world?

by aceofdiamonds



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4377845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the summer following the battle of hogwarts and how harry struggles to go back to a life where he can have peace, free from the threat of voldemort. but peace, he finds as he fights nightmares and guilt, is much harder to find. </p>
<p>"I'm fine," Harry snaps, turning his head to the window where, right on clockwork, the woman from across the road leaves with her toddler son. His head hurts. Not in the pointed, prickly way it did before but a constant throb, every noise magnifying it. "I'm just tired."</p>
            </blockquote>





	should i believe in the world?

 

 

 

After the battle everyone tries to find a way back to their lives Before. Back to their families and to their homes where they no longer have to live in such fear now that Voldemort is gone, this time for good. Harry doesn't have a life from before, not one that he wants to return to anyway. Voldemort and the prophecy have taken up so much of him he can’t imagine what it could be like to live a life where that’s not his end goal. Ron and Hermione try persuading him to go back to the Burrow with them but Fred is there, his ghost, his death in the eyes of everyone who lives there, and so Harry refuses. He can’t go where he brought death.

It’s ironic, then, when he decides where he’s going to live. Irony, a little stupidity, and a lot of wanting what he can’t have goes into the decision. When Ron and Hermione exchange that look they perfected years ago, right at the start of their journey together, Harry avoids them and makes feeble excuses about tiredness. It always works.

12 Grimmauld Place is well and truly his again, free from Death Eaters and long gone curses. This is his home now. This is how he wishes his life was Before, living with his godfather in a house they had made their own, and if he can’t have the real thing he’s going to try his damn hardest to make-believe. 

  
  
  


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The nightmares start the first night he sleeps outside of Hogwarts. He lies in the narrow bed that once belonged to Regulus Black alone in the house that once housed the Order and screams until his throat feels raw, his eyes refusing to open to free him from the scenes that pull him apart from the inside out. 

His hands are damp with sweat when they tug at his t-shirt, pulling it over his head in a bid to escape from the weight that’s pulling him down, pressing him to the bed, trapping him there. His fingers slide along the frame of the bed; the metal that should feel cool against his skin but instead matches the clammy temperature of his body. He groans and twists and works too hard at trying to clear his mind that he doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

  
  
  


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This repeats. Every night.

Sometimes he’ll manage to slip back under, black shapeless figures pulling at his feet until he’s below the surface and can’t breathe. Other times he’ll lie awake until the sun cracks through the gap in the curtains, his body tired and relieved when he gets up.

  
  
  


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In the mornings he sits by the window of the dingy drawing room and watches people making their way to work, school, whatever else people do when they’ve not just come out of a war, and tries to fight the drooping of his eyelids. This is one of the battles he invariably loses; the monsters and disembodied voices don't hold back, night or day. 

  
  
  


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He doesn’t know what ones are worse. The violent bloody battles where he loses his wand or can’t think of a spell and has to stand and watch someone else die or the quiet calm dreams that start with someone talking to him -- the cycle flips from Sirius to his parents to Remus to little Colin Creevey, telling him everything he did wrong, how he could have saved them, saved everyone, their voice getting louder and louder until Harry has to curl up and cover his ears, trying to block out the voices he would die to hear again.

  
  
  


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"You haven't answered any owls," Ron says when Hermione is making them tea in the kitchen, his voice low as though this is something he and Hermione haven't discussed ten times or more. "We're worried about you, mate."

"I'm fine," Harry snaps, turning his head to the window where, right on clockwork, the woman from across the road leaves with her toddler son. His head hurts. Not in the pointed, prickly way it did before but a constant throb, every noise magnifying it. "I'm just tired."

Ron winces sympathetically, not really understanding but trying to. "It'll get better."

"Yeah."

"It has to."

Hermione comes back then with a tray covered in things that make Harry's stomach turn. He can see what they're trying to do but right now all he wants is to be alone. And to sleep. But that goes without saying at this point.

  
  
  


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He buys a TV.

If he’s going to be up all night he’s going to need something to focus on and this seems like the most harmless option. Standing in the queue at the shop brings back memories of Privet Drive; Dudley’s birthdays where a new even bigger, fancier, screen would replace the old, still shiny one. This is a cheap, portable thing with five channels and an aerial. It feels wrong sitting on the table in the middle of the living room, surrounded by centuries old artefacts coveted by the Black family, magic whirring through every room, but he hopes it helps.

  
  
  


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The only things on at 3am are infomercials for cleaning products and documentaries of old wars that everyone’s seen a hundred times before. Harry sits in the dark and listens to the narrator listing the numbers of people killed, the amount of guns used, how both sides lost more than they ever should have. Harry listens to a war that was fought decades ago with weapons so different from their own and feels guilt, still. More than ever.

  
  
  


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Three days later a heavy tombe shatters the screen cutting off talk of what could have been done to prevent such a war. The silence buzzes in Harry’s ears only ending when he closes his eyes and gives himself over to the horror on the other side.

  
  
  


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There are days when he feels like things might turn out okay. When he manages to grab four hours of dreamless sleep and the world doesn’t seem so blurry when he opens his eyes. On these days he takes advantage and walks around the back garden. It’s tiny and cramped with too many kinds of dying flowers decorating the sparse square of grass but there's a wisp of a breeze in the air that feels cooling on his clammy skin. On a lap, Harry kicks at the watering-can abandoned from that summer before fifth year when this house had been full of life and swears loudly when all that dribbles out is rusty oil and the stench of fertiliser. He kicks at the can again until it skids across to the gate on the other side of garden, hitting the fence with a dull thud. The garden is dying, slowly, painfully, and it feels like a huge fucking metaphor for his own life.

After an hour or so he trudges back inside, the door clicking shut behind him, and makes himself a sandwich. He’s running low on bread, he sees, scraping together a slice of cold meat and a sliver of butter left over from when Ron and Hermione last dropped by. There’s a pretence going on with them -- he knows that they must realise there’s something wrong with him but they know him too well to push it otherwise he’ll break away and disappear. He doesn’t know if he prefers this to the nagging to get help.

On these days when he doesn’t feel the worst he ever has he picks up his wand from his bedside table and grips it loosely, feeling out the weight of it and how it fits in his hand. It’s hard to reconcile this wand with the person he was before the final Battle. Yes he had had nightmares and headaches and a murderer after his blood but he had had a _purpose_ then, he had something to work towards, and now the wand feels useless and frail in his hand. It’s been three months since he deflected Riddle’s curse with one of his own and he hasn’t cast another spell since. If he mentioned it to Hermione she would say it was psychological, a left-over pain from the last year of using magic to save his life, and Ron would sympathise, say he had the same troubles at first but once he realised magic wasn’t to blame for everything that had happened, it had been the people behind the wands, then he had been okay, you should try it too, mate, you might feel the same. Harry pretends his wand is too far away, feigning laziness, when they drop by and raise their eyebrows quizzically as he draws the curtains by hand or when he carries through the tray of drinks instead of levitating or summoning them.

But Harry stands there in his dark dusty room and he raises his hand and he tries and he tries but he can’t get even a spark out of the other end. This is when he shouts and kicks and half-wishes that magic had never been part of his life so he would never have all of this grief.

  
  
  


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He never really wishes that, though, not even when he hasn’t slept for three days and he thinks he can see the shapes of Sirius and Remus and Tonks in the corner of his eye. Magic is what saved him and magic is what he would turn to every time in a heartbeat.

  
  
  


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When Ginny comes to visit him a hot day in the middle of July it’s harder to pretend. He hasn’t seen her much since the funerals, since he locked himself away from everyone he knows, and when she walks into his kitchen he realises how much he’s missed her. She has her hair pulled back into a ponytail and there’s a heavy sadness on her face, one that Harry knows has been there since Fred’s death, but when she walks into the kitchen he realises he’s needed her all of this time, and that maybe she’s needed him too.

“Where have you been?” she asks quietly, sitting down at the kitchen table.

He shrugs, joins her at the table. “I don’t know what to do,” he says, too honest. “Ginny, I can’t --” and a fresh wave of guilt crashes into him because Ginny lost Fred, she lost Remus and Tonks, too, and Colin, and countless more. She’s not the one hiding out, unable to talk to anyone. “I’m sorry.”

“I am too, Harry,” she says. “But don’t think about that just now, okay? Tell me about what you’ve been doing.”

“I’ve been here.” He gestures to the bleak walls, his hand dropping onto the table between them with a thud.

“Ron says you’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

Harry remembers before when he would erupt at the thought of his friends discussing him behind his back, so used to it from everyone around him, everyone feeling like they know so much more about him than he does. Now he nods and sighs, nothing to deny. “I can’t fucking sleep, Gin.”

“There are Healers who can help you, Harry. You don’t have to fight this by yourself, Merlin knows you’ve been through enough that way.”

“I’m just tired, Ginny,” he tries to argue, hearing how weak his voice sounds. He doesn’t mention the wand thing and how he’s not sure he would be able to make it to St. Mungo’s for any help at all. “I can handle this myself.”

"We just want you get better," Ginny's voice is soft, the hand on Harry's shoulder small and gentle. He wants to lean into it, rest his head on her lap like he did during those afternoons by the lake, the afternoons that were barely two years ago but feel like a lifetime, if they were real at all. Instead he keeps his back straight, his eyes ahead, and shrugs when she says, "Harry, let us help you.”

The thought of fighting it further feels so draining Harry finds himself nodding in agreement, okay, fine, he’ll try and get help. Ginny squeezes his shoulder, keeping it there when he raises his own to rest it on hers.

She produces two burgers from her bag, a Warming Charm keeping them hot for the walk from the cafe a couple of streets away. Harry eats his in four bites, flipping Ginny off with a greasy finger when she bares her teeth and calls him a werewolf. She finishes hers not long after, crumpling up the wrappers and tossing them at Harry's head. When he stands up and throws them in the bin she doesn't comment on the lack of magic instead just smiles at him, a little sad and a little weary.

She tells him about her family, how they’re trying to put themselves back together after Fred. She talks about Fleur and Bill and their hints that they’re thinking of expanding their family and she laughs when she tells him about the time Charlie and then Ron walked in on them shagging in Shell Cottage. Her voice wobbles when Harry brings Fred up again and this time Harry is the one reaching out to offer support, the most useful he’s felt in months when she leans into it, clearing her throat and telling him about Ron’s plans to help George in the shop for a bit.

Before, Harry and Ron had talked about joining the Aurors -- that had been Harry’s ambition for as long as he knew what they were and Ron had always found it exciting and cool, taking down dark wizards for the safety of the country. But now -- now Harry can’t hold his wand without feeling like he’s breaking inside and he can’t think about leaving the house that has been trapping him for months and Ron, well, Ron has his family to think of.

“You look like shit, Harry,” Ginny says when she’s leaving, the smile from before a little bigger, a little less sad now that she’s got something of a promise out of Harry. There’s something in him that wants to follow Ginny out of the door, to take her advice and get help immediately, to find some way to live again. That’s the effect she’s always had on him. Now he fights against it, pushes it down. He’s not ready for any of that yet. Neither of them are.

So instead he leans against the door jamb and he waves goodbye, managing something close to a smile himself when he says, “Thanks. I’ve missed you, Gin.”

“You know where I am,” she says before she steps off the doorstep and Disapparates with a pop.

  
  
  


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When Ginny appears in his nightmares she’s ethereal and terrifying, her long hair flying out behind her like a lick of fire as she hurtles towards Harry, whispering curses in his ear before she grabs his face and kisses him deeply. In these dreams he feels helpless and desperate, clinging to Ginny as tightly as he can, scared she’ll disappear, as terrifying as she is. When they kiss it feels like he’s exploding, parts of him flying everywhere, and when Ginny pulls away she smirks and collects up the pieces of Harry that have broken away, sauntering away into the darkness like she couldn’t care less what happens to him.

These nightmares leave Harry shaky and confused when he wakes up, a fist curled in the sheets and his body heavy and sticky. He falls back against the pillow, closing his eyes as his breathing evens out, and focuses on the way it had felt when Ginny’s lips had touched his, a split second of normalcy to the whole thing.

  
  
  


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“So you’re not sleeping?”

It’s an abrupt beginning to the therapy session Harry has finally agreed to. They’re in the sitting room in Grimmauld Place, partly down to the fact that Harry hasn’t gone further than the square out the front in the last six weeks and partly due to the confidentiality provided by St Mungo’s mental health unit. They’ll be there for you, wherever you need to be.

“I’ve been having nightmares,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Some nights -- most nights -- I haven’t slept at all.”

The Healer -- Sarah MacLeod, she’d introduced herself as with a gentle smile as he’d let her in the front door -- nods, her eyes steady on him. “That’s understandable. You’ve been through a hell of a lot in your short life, if you don’t mind me saying. I know that some nights I have trouble getting through the night and I was never on the battlefield.”

“You must have had a lot of people like me,” Harry says, sure that he’s not the only one returning to normal life so badly but wanting confirmation. “People who haven’t been able to cope.”

She sighs, another sad nod. “It’s too much to ask for people as young as you to fight in a war like that. People don’t think about the lasting mental effects past a broken leg and a bout of dizziness. Not that you had any choice in the matter.”

“There was a choice,” Harry feels the need to say stubbornly. “People chose to fight.”

“Well you’re all all the more braver for it,” she says. "And don't think the public aren't grateful for it, because we are."

But Harry's known all along how grateful the public have been, to the point it had been suffocating him and he'd locked himself in this old house to get away from it all. He can’t accept this praise for saving the country when he let so many people die.

“Let’s start with the subject of these nightmares,” she says, bringing the subject back to why Harry hasn’t slept in weeks. “What’s been happening in them?”

And it seems straight-forward enough to tell her about the deaths of those he couldn’t save, the fear of more of the same to come, but he can’t find the words when he searches for them. It feels impossible to compartmentalise these horrors into numb phrases and descriptions.

"It feels like something's burning inside me," he says just as she's leaving. He adds desperately, "I thought that would end when I killed him."

“That’s why you’ve contacted me,” she says kindly, her bag slung over her arm and her foot out the door. “I’m going to help you as best as I can.”

  
  
  


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That night when he succumbs to sleep and the screaming starts he fights as best as he can, trying to focus on what Healer MacLeod had told him about being in charge of his demons. But he’s exhausted, in every sense of the word, and so instead he forces himself awake and spends the rest of the night trying to block out the horrors of the bodies and the flames he can’t see anymore.

  
  
  


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“Do you think medication would help?” Hermione asks anxiously when Harry tells her what Sarah had said at his last meeting about possibly starting him on a course of potions.

It doesn’t feel like there’s ever going to be a solution but Harry’s reaching the stage where he feels he should try anything. “I dunno. Maybe.”

“I just don’t know if depending on a potion would be helpful in the long-run,” she says, her hands fluttering over the tea cups, dropping too many sugars in Harry’s.

“I can’t sleep, Hermione. Weeks down the line mean nothing to me at the moment.”

She winces. “I know, Harry. I’m worried about you.” Stirring her tea she adds, “I’ve been reading about nightmares and how they fit in with the typical post-trauma sequence -- not that you’re anything like the typical case, a lot of this is Muggle based, wizards don’t seem to have put a lot of time into researching mental illnesses --”

“Hermione,” Harry says firmly. “Can you just -- _stop_ for a second. I can’t think.”  

After thirty seconds she says quietly. “Harry, do you feel similar to how you did in fifth year? Angry, restless...?”

Fifth year. When Sirius had died and Harry had spent most of the year getting his hand carved up. He wants to know where Umbridge is now, he realises in a burst of anger. He wants to know that she’s been served the justice she handed out to so many helpless and undeserving people.

“Harry.”

There was the book through the television and there have been plant pots and cabinets that have shattered after a shock of rage or grief had pushed through Harry. In fifth year there had been the bowl of Murtlap Essence and he had shouted at or shut himself away from everyone he had cared about because he hadn’t known how to handle the way his head had been pounding and his hands had been trembling all year.

“I think you might have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Hermione says when he nods jerkily. “Ginny says Neville has it too, and Parvati. Loads of people. It’s no surprise after everything we’ve been through.”

“What about you?” Because Hermione had been tortured by Bellatrix on top of everything she went through with Harry. “Why aren’t you...” Screaming through the night, clawing at your sheets until your nails bleed, goes unsaid.

To that she shakes her head. “I’m sure I do to some degree. I don’t want to go into it all but I’m really glad my parents are back safe. I’d be lost without them.” She pauses at this, aware of its implications, but Harry’s been getting through without parents for eighteen years, he needs to be able to handle this without them too. “Maybe this isn’t the healthiest place to live in at the moment,” she finishes, doing that apologetic wince she’s been doing all summer.

“Sirius left this to me.”

"And Sirius would understand that this place is hurting more than helping you."

“I’ll think about it,” he says eventually, and then he walks Hermione out. As he’s putting away the food she had brought round he tries to imagine living somewhere else, somewhere he’s never lived before. It’s appealing in a way that makes him feel guilty for leaving Sirius and by extension Remus and the rest of the Order. He closes the fridge door with a thud, sighing when a sprinkle of dust falls on his shoulder from the impact.  

  
  
  


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“Tell me about Hagrid,” Sarah says at their next session. “How did you meet him?”

“He brought me from the Dursleys,” Harry tells her. “He was the one who told me I was wizard.”

“And you kept in contact with him throughout your years at Hogwarts?”

“Of course.”

“He’s someone you trust?”

“With my life,” Harry says, confused with the line of questioning. “What’s Hagrid got to do with this?”

“I want you to remember that Hagrid got out of the war alive and relatively unscathed. He never stopped believing in you and he’s none the worse off for that.”

Harry straightens in his chair, the confusion rolling into anger. “He had to run for his life and hide in the Forbidden Forest until Voldemort had him carry me back into the castle with the belief that I was dead. I wouldn’t call that _unscathed_.”

“He’s alive,” Sarah insists. “Hagrid is back in his cabin at Hogwarts, helping with the reconstruction of the castle. He’s shaken by the year’s events, everyone is, but he’s alive and well and he’s thankful for it.”

“I don’t understand where you’re going with this,” Harry frowns.

Sarah leans forward, her papers falling to the side. “Harry, this guilt you have over the people who were killed in action must be erased and replaced by the relief and gratitude that so many others have survived. I chose Hagrid because he is special to you, he always has been, and he’s never been far from you, not when you were eleven, not last year, and not now. Do you think Voldemort would have treated Hagrid well, knowing who he was to you? You saved Hagrid, and countless others, by doing what you did. The people who died should be mourned, yes, but you can’t hold yourself accountable for their deaths, not when you were vital for allowing their families to live. To move past this you have to understand and believe that.”

“I can’t just decide not to feel that way,” Harry retorts. “I’ve never been good at Occlumency.”

“This isn’t about closing off your mind,” she says, her voice always smooth, soothing. “I want you to try and change those feelings of guilt into relief and I want you to try and stop pulling all this blame on yourself because that’s at the heart of what’s dragging you down every night.”

Harry can’t help but think it all sounds fucking impossible but okay, he says, he’ll give it a try.

  
  
  


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Harry moves into a flat in Muggle London following the second suggestion from Sarah that perhaps a change of scenery will help, after all it can't help living in a house with so many ghosts. Hermione and Ron help him pack a few essential possessions into two boxes, joining him in Side-Along Apparition. It feels jarringly like they’re babysitting him, the two of them pottering around his new place, sitting things down in all the wrong places, making themselves a pot of tea, chattering and chattering until Harry snaps and asks them to leave, thanks for the help, he’ll see them tomorrow.

His new flat is much smaller than Grimmauld Place. The ceilings are barely higher than Harry’s head, when he raises his arm just a little he can brush away the cobwebs clinging to the corners of his new bedroom. There’s a bedroom, a living room/kitchen, and a bathroom. For someone who has never been used to much space maybe this place will be better for him for the time being.

  
  
  


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A positive of the new place is that the downstairs neighbours are never in; the walls here are thin enough that every scream that rips from his throat must be loud and clear for everyone around him. He rolls onto his back, hands clutching at his hair, and he wonders when this is going to change, when he’s going to be allowed to move on with his life.

Maybe this is it.

Maybe this is how the rest of his life is going to be -- broken nights and images crowding his head, no sleep for the good.

  
  
  


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But still he tries. He listens to Sarah and he focuses on the people he cares about who made it out of the other side. The thought of Ron or Hermione or Ginny not surviving is enough for him to want to sink to the floor in relief, wondering if this is selfish, this spark of happiness that he hasn’t lost his three closest friends. He doesn’t know if what he’s doing is working or not but the weight that hangs around his shoulders doesn’t feel quite so heavy anymore.

  
  
  


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“Time will heal you,” Ginny says. “After Tom I would get nightmares and night terrors almost every night. I felt like I was losing my mind, a terrifying thought after I’d given my mind away for the last year. It wasn’t until I opened up to my mum and to Bill that I began to gain some control over what was haunting me. The nightmares still come, worse now after everything, but they’re not with me every night. And that’s better.” She reaches over the table to take his hand. “Harry, you _will_ get better.”

“Are you promising me?” he asks childishly.

“Yes.”

When Ginny stands up to leave Harry takes a step towards her and then he's holding her. The feel of her against him is overwhelming, this solid body who knows what he's going through and who loves him despite it all. Her hand skates up and down his back, a comfort Harry didn’t even realise he’d missed, and when he ducks his head his cheek brushes her hair and he wants nothing more than to stay here forever, that feeling of peace so hard to come by when Ginny is not in the room.

She pulls away gently, tilting her face up to Harry’s. He wants to tell her that he loves her, that he wants to be with her all the time, but he can’t do that right now, not when he’s still mostly hollow.

“Soon,” he promises.

  
  
  


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Last night he had dreamed of a wide open field, daisies dotted everywhere and the sun shining bright, and he had woken up to the absence of the pressing at his skull. He had kept his eyes closed tightly in fear of the idyllic, too perfect, dream falling away when he opened them, and he had spent the morning imagining scenarios where such a place could fit into his life.

  
  
  


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Two weeks later, a chilling sensation jerks Harry awake as the sun is rising. He gropes for his wand, ignoring the fact that at the moment it’s useless, and looks around for the intruder. A breath whooshes out of him when he sees it’s only Ron’s Patronus.

He pushes his wand back under his pillow as the dog opens its mouth and Ron’s voice floods the room, friendly but cautious, “Harry, mate, Mum’s on the way over, just thought I’d let you know. See you tomorrow.”

The Jack Russell fades into the air leaving Harry bemused. He sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes until stars burst behind his eyes. He thinks he slept better last night. He managed to grab at least four hours of dreamless sleep and when he fumbles for his glasses and slides them on he realises that that’s the sixth night in a row he’s reached that number.

He pads through to the living room, casting an eye over the cluttered table, the clothes scattered everywhere. If his magic was working he could fix this in a matter of seconds but instead he trudges around the room, kicking clothes into hidden spaces and piling mugs into the sink. He surveys the room with a sigh. This is a slightly more respectable mess.

He doesn’t know what he’ll be able to say when Mrs Weasley arrives. Harry knows what the loss of parents feels like, the feeling abstract and long-reaching after living his entire life with this weight. He’s grown used to it in the way where that’s the only viable option. He lost his parents before he could remember -- this is all he’s ever known.

But Molly Weasley -- Molly Weasley has suffered what every parent dreads their entire life. To lose a child is to lose a part of you and Harry, despite all the loss he's had in his life, cannot comprehend what that could possibly feel like.

She reaches for him as soon as he opens the door, her arms around him pulling him into that small, warm space of comfort he's never been able to fight. When she draws back after a long moment Harry gets a look at her face; she's older looking, weary, tired, Fred's death written right there for everyone to see. She looks like a woman who has lost a fight with the world.

"I would have been around sooner, Harry," she says, hands now running down his arms to check his weight, measuring his well being with that look that's not far off from Dumbledore's, "but I just haven't been able to think straight what with the funerals and the shop and oh, George."

"Don't apologise, Mrs Weasley," he rushes to say, eager to portray the look of someone on their feet, no cause for worry. "You don't need to worry about me. You stay with your family."

Her face crumples momentarily before arranging itself back into a gentle yet stern stare. "Harry, dear, you know you're family, too."

He always has been, ever since he saw this sprawling, friendly family at Kings Cross and Ron had found the compartment Harry had hidden in, but he’s never tried out the sentence in his own mouth, never heard it said out-right to him like this, either. It leaves him winded, unable to proceed.

She smiles at him and then looks around his flat. He hasn't done much to make it his own; the walls are bare, the furniture what was there when he moved in. It’s nothing like The Burrow where every corner tells you something about the Weasleys. “I’m glad you decided to move out of Grimmauld Place, Harry. I know it was important to Sirius but that house is too harmful to live in for long.”

Harry misses it. Misses knowing that he’s retracing steps Sirius took, that around him is where the Order held their most important meetings as they strategised against Voldemort before the rest of the country believed he was back. He misses the twisted comfort he got in knowing that ghosts walked the dark, gloomy halls, fitting of his mood. But he knows that Mrs Weasley, and Hermione, and Healer MacLeod are right -- ever since he’s moved here the nightmares have lessened, marginally, but lessened nevertheless.

“I like it here,” he tells Mrs Weasley, a little bit of honesty in there. “It’s near to everything.”

She doesn’t comment on the fact that he’s only been outside unless absolutely necessary and instead walks over to the kitchen, examining the gritty rim of his sink. The slump of her shoulders, pronounced when she’s bent over the sink, twists Harry’s stomach.

He clears his throat. “How are you doing, Mrs Weasley?”

She moves around his kitchen, wand flicking at various drawers and cupboards, checking for suitable food as she makes a pot of tea, the mugs clinking together gently as they fly out of a cupboard above her head. It’s a long time before she answers him, turning to face him, her mouth shaky but strong. “As well as I can,” she says. “That’s all we can do for the moment, isn’t it?”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs Weasley,” he says then, because after the immediate end of the war people scattered and he doesn’t think he’s had a chance to tell Mrs Weasley how sincerely sorry he is about Fred.

“Thank you, Harry.” She holds his gaze for a beat longer and then she turns back to the counter. “Now, Ron said he brought round some shopping yesterday but I bet there wasn’t much fruit or vegetables there, was there?”

“I made vegetable soup last night,” he says, smiling a little when Mrs Weasley tuts. “It was so good I ate it all at once, that’s why there’s none to show you.”

She gestures for him to sit down on the couch, bringing over the pot and a tray of biscuits Harry didn’t know he had. “I worry about you,” she says, all blunt sentences and no-nonsense. “Harry, you know you’re welcome to stay at The Burrow, don’t you? You’re always welcome.”

Harry ducks his head, cheeks flushed, because Mrs Weasley understands a lot but she doesn’t know about the cloying in his throat when he feels guilt or grief, when he collapses onto his bed and has trouble breathing when he thinks too much about the Battle where she lost her son. He’s trying to get better, he’s trying so hard, but he’s not there yet. “Thank you,” he mumbles. “I’ll think about it.”

"Ron told me you've been having trouble with your magic," Mrs Weasley says quietly after a moment, pouring them both some tea.

And Harry had been thinking that he had got it past them, that no one had caught onto the fact that the wizard who had saved them all hasn't been able to do so much as an Alohomora since.

"I've been working on it," he mutters into his mug.

"It's nothing to be ashamed about," she assures him. "It's a normal reaction to traumatic events. Grief is another factor -- I know that in the days following the Battle I didn't even attempt to lift my wand, the thought was unbearable. And George -- I'm worried he'll continue to think that way for a long time. The way your wand has always been and the strength of your magic, Harry, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a bit of trouble getting back to it."

"What if I never get it back?"

“Positive thinking, Harry,” she says, leaning forward slightly in her seat. “That’s what helping me get through each day. I have six of my children and my husband, that’s a lot more than most people can say. You’ll get your magic.”

  
  
  


.

  
  
  


Harry’s been collecting people’s promises like they’re Chocolate Frog Cards. He fans them out around him as he lies in his bed, picking up each one and examining it, thinking about the person who gave it to him, and then moving onto the next. There are ones made to him, made for him, made _by_ him.

He chooses magic, Mrs Weasley’s, because that’s the one that feels most like losing a limb and he needs that limb back.

  
  
  


.

  
  
  


On the second of August, two days after his eighteenth birthday and three months to the day after the Battle of Hogwarts Harry manages to _Accio_ a book from across the room. His wand trembles in his hand so much he has to drop it but he manages a gasp of laughter, the success of such a small spell the best thing he’s done in months.

He picks up his wand and tries again, a warmth spreading along his fingertips to the centre of his chest when a jumper flies into his outstretched hand.

Maybe he should start small, ease himself back into it, but after not being able to perform magic for three months he can’t get over the feeling at being able to _do_ this. He feels like he’s working again. This is what he can do.

He flicks his wand and shouts “Scourgify!” over-enthusiastically causing plates to clash against each other as they move around the sink, anxious to get clean. Papers flutter into a somewhat neat pile on the table; a cloth swirls across the floor getting rid of stains and mud; the place pulls itself back together. It’s still messy but it’s liveable.

A Patronus feels too ambitious, impossible when he’s still struggling to free his mind from the black of the Battle, so he summons a quill and scribbles out a note. It takes another moment for him to remember that he doesn’t have an owl anymore and the nearest wizard Post Office is too far away -- he drops the note onto the newly-cleaned floor and tells Ron and Hermione when they visit the next day.

“That’s great,” Ron says, a smile spreading across his face when he casts his eyes around the flat and sees it noticeably cleaner. “Are you feeling better?”

“A bit,” Harry admits, that light feeling from the day before still clinging to his bones. “Are you doing okay?”

Ron shrugs. At Fred’s funeral he had leaned into Hermione, Harry on his other side, and hadn’t spoken for the rest of the day, his face blank and his movements jerky as he had moved from room to room. He’s doing okay, Hermione had told Harry. They’re getting through it day to day. “Okay about sums it up. I can’t believe we thought it would all go back to normal as soon as it was over.”

“You know me, Ron, my life’s never been that normal,” bringing back what they used to joke about, when the scale was smaller and they weren’t in so much danger.

That gets a soft laugh, Hermione’s eyes shimmering a little, Ron’s arm extending around her. “We miss you, Harry,” she says, but Harry knows she can see that this is the beginning of the next part of his life. He thinks he’s emerging out of the fog, little by little, day by day. He’s almost there.

“I miss you too,” he says, and then, perhaps throwing too much on himself, he adds. “Your mum invited me to lunch at yours next weekend, Ron.”

“What are you thinking?” Ron asks, fully aware that Harry’s more likely to say no than he is yes.

But he dips his head, lips curving into a smile. “Think I might be able to make it.”

  
  
  


.

  
  
  


The Burrow is loud and bright; people are standing around talking, helping make lunch, everywhere Harry turns. He finds himself in conversation with Charlie and Percy, the three of them standing out in the garden beside the tables brought outside to accommodate everyone. The sun is warm on Harry’s arms and he wonders how much he’s missed of it keeping himself in his flat with the blinds closed. He tilts his head back, eyes closed, and breathes in the warm air, a slight breeze stopping it from stifling them.

“You should feel the heat in Romania,” Charlie says. He nudges Percy. “Don’t think you could handle it, Perc.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Percy agrees. “British summers are as hot as I like.”

“When do you go back to Romania, Charlie?” Harry asks.

“A fortnight tomorrow. I would’ve gone back already but I stuck around for Ginny’s birthday and then I thought I might as well stay till she goes back to school. The lads know what they’re doing over there -- and they’ve been great about my leave for the battle and then for the funerals.”

Harry blinks. “Ginny’s birthday?”

Percy laughs lightly. “Don’t tell me you forgot, Harry.”

It’s not that he’s forgotten; he just never knew when it was and shamefully it never occurred for him to ask. He remembers suddenly that it had been his own recently. The thought of a birthday just doesn’t fit into his mind at the moment. When he struggles to recall how the day had been spent he guesses it had been one of those days where he hadn’t gotten out of bed. It’s true that those days haven’t been as frequent recently but they’re still often enough that he feels a surge of energy at being out the house today. “It’s today?”

“If anyone can get away with forgetting her birthday,” Charlie says, patting Harry’s shoulder, “it’s you, Harry.”

Harry opens his mouth to say again that he had no idea when it was, it hadn’t been a case of forgetting, when Ginny appears in the door, her eyes locking on Harry’s.

“Mum’s looking for both of you,” she tells her brothers, jerking her head inside. “Something about missing cutlery.”

Percy frowns, goes to protest, but Charlie tugs him back inside by the arm, leaving Harry and Ginny alone.

“It’s nice to see you outside,” Ginny says. The stretched collar of her t-shirt dips down across her collarbones and when she pulls her long hair over one shoulder the material shifts, exposing the pale, freckled skin of her shoulder. When Harry meets her eyes she smiles and he mirrors her, feeling closer to the Harry from Before than ever.

“No one told me it was your birthday,” he confesses, dropping his head. “I don’t have anything for you.”

Ginny laughs. “It’s alright, Harry. You’ve been caught up in a lot -- you’re excused.”

“Have you had a good day?”

“I’m not sure we’re ready for a party yet,” she says, chewing at her bottom lip. “It doesn’t feel right to be celebrating so soon after the Battle.”

“I don’t think Fred would agree with that,” Harry says hesitantly. “You know he would want you to have fun, for him.”

She looks up at him, studying him. “That’s true. He would.”

“So, seventeen,” he says, leaning in a little. Ginny shifts her body closer. “Any big plans now you’re of Age?”

“Nothing comes to mind,” she replies after thinking for a moment. “Quidditch, school, helping out around here.”

It’s easy, out here with Ginny, in a way that Harry could never have hoped for. “You know where I am if you want someone to really challenge you.”

“I don’t know about that,” she laughs. “I can fly circles around you, Potter.”

“I’m rusty,” he protests.

“You’re looking better,” Ginny says, sombre. “Are you?”  

“I’m better than before,” is the best way to sum up how he feels like he’s still drowning, still searching for a deep breath of air, but now he’s much closer to the surface than he was three months ago.

“Is it too much to say I’m glad you’re here?”

“No. I’m glad I’m here, too.”

They watch each other for a long moment, half-expecting to be interrupted by someone spilling out of the over-crowded house, and then Ginny reaches up and kisses his cheek, lips soft and dry.

“Happy birthday, Ginny.”

  
  
  


.

  
  
  


Harry stays the night, sleeping in Ron's room in the camp bed he slept in last summer, and when he wakes up just before dawn from a nightmare he thought he had shaken off, Ron is there beside him. Ron doesn't wake up but being able to see him, being able to hear him snoring, is company Harry has been fighting all summer. It's a comfort that allows him to lie back in his bed, close his eyes, and fall back to sleep. 

 

 


End file.
